Well, Don't Get Your Goddamn Panties In A Twist

I was in the Army as an RN and often taught battlefield trauma classes to Special Forces in the various military specialties, i.e. Rangers, SEALs. So, those boys taught me a lot of salty language that I've been trying to unlearn now that I'm a grandmother. But, it's hard. I was around that language for almost 15 years until I was sidelined by said battlefield trauma.

But, my favorite profanities are "goddamn" and "for crissake."

I love those words. They roll off my tongue in a way that pleases me and brings back good memories. I never cuss at my loved ones and rarely at other people (except when I read about teahadists and Rethugs pulling their usual crap.) My cussing is mostly descriptive, used for the most part as expletives, adjectives, etc.

I'm sure you all know where I'm going with this. The all too often admonishment to quit "taking the Lord's name in vain."

It doesn't help to tell them that "God" isn't the deity's name. "God is his title," I explain. "Now, if I'd said 'Jehovah damned or Yahweh damned' that would be different." I don't know if you've ever noticed, but unless the person admonishing you is a Jehovah's Witness, they really don't seem too shocked by taking in vain the actual name of their god. Probably because they really don't ascribe to it. I guess I'm just grousing. Didn't a Monty Python sketch once have a similiar discussion about it when a guy was trying to tempt god to strike him with lightning? I'm just so sick of being the only atheist in a large Catholic family with all this religion crap this election season and I'm blowing off steam. I'm putting a pillow over my head and screaming those two words until I'm raw in the throat. I'm sure that tornado warning has nothing to do with my cussing.

2. RNs are the biggest potty mouths on the planet

and I was a rock'n'roll roadie in the 60s so I know what I'm talking about. I once made a longshoreman blush.

Anybody who criticizes my language is going to get a lecture on minding his or her own fucking business. Their eyebrows and eyelashes will be gone and their nose hairs curled by the time I'm done with them. I do not handle censorship well.

That being said, I don't usually burst forth with profanity unless there is a very good reason for it and even at that, I keep a lid on it around little kids. Teenagers are fair game.

3. Well it is a bit odd for atheists to implore the gods to bring their wrath down on others.

We should strive to stick to secular curses. The ever useful "mother-fucker", the mundane "shit", and if it needs to get personal, there is always "bitchy snot-rocket", which I learned right here on du.

4. Nah - godly curses are part of the standard lexicon

Along with other godly phrases even 'stealth' ones such as "goodbye".

I am not the kind of affected atheist who can abjure decades of immersion in English vernacular and say "Syncretic hero-savior myth on a crutch!" when I skin my knuckles or "Oh for the love of the amalgam of Canaanite and Edomite henotheisms!" when Romney says another damn stupid thing on TV.

I don't worry that I'm not a sailor when I say someone is three sheets to the wind; that I'm not a weaver when I say a movie is run of the mill; that I'm not a jeweler when I say another is of the first water. Why then should I worry that I'm not a believer when I say yet another was godawful?